Music Production and Mixing Tips for Music Producers and Artists | Inside The Mix
If you're searching for answers on topics such as: what is mixing in music, how I can learn to mix music, how to start music production, how can I get better at music production, what is music production, or maybe how to get into the music industry or even just how to release music. Either way, you’re my kind of person and there's something in this podcast for you!
I'm Marc Matthews and I host the Inside The Mix Podcast. It's the ultimate serial podcast for music production and mixing enthusiasts. Say goodbye to generic interviews and tutorials, because I'm taking things to the next level. Join me as I feature listeners in round table music critiques and offer exclusive one-to-one coaching sessions to kickstart your music production and mixing journey. Get ready for cutting-edge music production tutorials and insightful interviews with Grammy Award-winning audio professionals like Dom Morley (Adele) and Mike Exeter (Black Sabbath). If you're passionate about music production and mixing like me, the Inside The Mix is the podcast you can't afford to miss!
Start with this audience-favourite episode: #75: How to Mix Bass Frequencies (PRODUCER KICKSTART: VYLT)
Thanks for listening & happy producing!
Music Production and Mixing Tips for Music Producers and Artists | Inside The Mix
#170: Unlocking Immersive Audio: Mastering Dolby Atmos with Matt Boudreau | Working Class Audio
Ever wondered how to learn Dolby Atmos mixing, what software is used for Dolby Atmos mixing, or even what is Dolby Atmos? In this exciting episode of the Inside The Mix podcast, I sit down with acclaimed audio engineer Matt Boudreau to explore the fascinating world of immersive audio.
With years of experience working alongside icons like Alanis Morissette and Green Day, Matt unpacks the transformative power of Dolby Atmos. Discover how this cutting-edge technology is revolutionizing the audio experience, offering listeners unparalleled depth and dimension—from earbuds to home theatres.
We delve into the essentials for anyone curious about diving into Dolby Atmos mixing:
- Understanding Dolby Atmos: Learn the basics of how this object-based format redefines audio, surpassing traditional stereo and surround sound.
- Setting Up for Success: Explore the tools you’ll need, from essential software to the ideal 7.1.4 speaker configuration.
- Industry Insights: Hear firsthand stories from Matt’s collaborations with industry legends like Steve Genewick and Andrew Scheps.
- Immersive Mixing Techniques: Get tips on using Dolby Atmos to create captivating mixes that translate across different playback systems.
- A Podcasting Pioneer: Learn about Matt’s journey in launching the Working Class Audio podcast and his commitment to mentoring audio professionals.
Whether you're a seasoned audio professional or a curious enthusiast, this episode is your guide to unlocking the full potential of Dolby Atmos.
Click here to follow Matt: https://www.workingclassaudio.com/
Click here to listen to WCA #200 with Tchad Blake: https://www.workingclassaudio.com/wca-200-with-tchad-blake/
Click here to listen to WCA #300 with Andrew Scheps: https://www.workingclassaudio.com/wca-300-with-andrew-scheps/
Got feedback? I’d love to hear from you! Click the SpeakPipe link to leave a review, share your social media handles or website, and get featured in a future episode:
https://www.speakpipe.com/InsideTheMixPodcast
Plus, one lucky reviewer will win a Starbucks voucher each month!
Wanna release more music in just 28 days? Click here
Follow Marc Matthew's Socials:
Instagram | YouTube | Synth Music Mastering
My friend, Chris Dugan, who works for Green Day, hit me up and he brought me tracks to do for Alanis Morissette and for Green Day. Green Day does the theme song to a show on HBO called Real Time with Bill Maher to broadcast live in Atmos. So that was the inaugural show to do it on. So they wanted the Green Day theme song mixed in Atmos so that if you have an Atmos system you'll hear my mix.
Marc Matthews:You're listening to the.
Matt Boudreau:Inside the Mix podcast with your host, Mark Matthews.
Marc Matthews:Hello and welcome to the Inside the Mix podcast. I'm Mark Matthews, your host, musician, producer and mix and mastering engineer. You've come to the right place if you want to know more about your favourite synth music artists, music engineering and production, songwriting and the music industry. I've been writing, producing, mixing and mastering music for over 15 years and I want to share what I've learnt with you. Hey, folks, and welcome to the Inside the Mix podcast. I am excited I always say this because I always am excited to introduce my guest today, a fellow podcaster, in Matt Boudreaux. So Matt's a highly experienced audio engineer who has worked with artists like Alanis Morissette, green Day and Death Heaven, and he's the host of the Working Class Audio podcast, a podcast that I listen to frequently. It's often the soundtrack to my runs that I do every day, and so, yeah, frequent listener. And today we'll be diving or deep diving, rather into the world of mixing in Dolby Atmos.
Marc Matthews:Now, this is a subject we were discussing off air that I've not covered on the podcast before, so this is a fact-finding mission for me as well. So I'm really excited about this one. Matt, thanks for joining me today. How are you? Hey, mark, I'm doing great. Excited to be here, yeah, fantastic. So really looking forward to this. I was inspired to have you on the podcast when I was listening to Lidge Shaw's recording studio Rockstars, when you were on Lidge's podcast as well, and I've had Lidge on the podcast too, so by the time this goes out, that episode would have dropped. So, yeah, I'm stoked to have you both on the podcast. So this is great. This is great.
Matt Boudreau:Yeah, I refer. We refer to each other as my brother from another podcast.
Marc Matthews:Yeah, I saw that online and I saw the picture. I think it might've been a picture. I think it was on Instagram where I saw that, at least the reference anyway. So, um, a bit about Matt for the audience listening who maybe they're not familiar with Matt and what he does. So vast experience spans stereo and Dolby, atmos mixing, and it's a field that's becoming more popular as immersive audio grows. So he's here to share his insights on Atmos. So you've worked extensively in both stereo and Dolby. Let's start with the basics. For those unfamiliar with Atmos, could you tell our audience a bit about the primary differences between mixing in stereo versus this immersive audio format like Dolby Atmos?
Matt Boudreau:I think at the core you're talking about, instead of mixing on two speakers, you're mixing on. You're talking about, instead of mixing on two speakers, you're mixing on, let's say, 12 speakers. In my case, I've got a and I'm making hand gestures because it's it's a seven, meaning seven speakers on this level. One is the sub or the lfe and four on the ceiling, so it's a 714 and you're just spreading information around in the speakers to be played back in a variety of places Homes, cars, speakers that contain a multitude of speakers, like the Sonos Aera 300, for example, or the Apple HomePod Pro.
Matt Boudreau:It can also be experienced in headphones. In headphones, it is a binaural representation of this speaker array and you can stream it on Apple Tidal, amazon. You can download files off of Immersive Audio Album and, yeah, it's something that's been around in the movies for quite some time and it started to make its way into the music world and I have been in it now for a little over three years and you know making records and engineering in total for about 30. So it's a very small chunk of my experience.
Marc Matthews:So you mentioned that about 12 speakers and the binaural. So it takes me back to when I was doing my master's degree in music engineering and production and one of my projects was with regards to binaural and spatial audio and this was many years ago now, so really, really interesting stuff. So, with regards to sort of the the amount of tracks that you find you're mixing in an atmos session, is there a limit the the amount of tracks that you find you're mixing in an atmos session, is there a limit to the amount of tracks you find there are more tracks in an atmos mix compared to sort of like a stereo mix?
Matt Boudreau:no, not really. Um, I guess it depends on the point at which atmos is introduced into the workflow. Um, you know, typically the beginning the workflow was fairly common to be. You know, you do the stereo mix and then stems were created and then those stems were then ported over to a new session and then an Atmos mix was created. So in the beginning there the track count was, you know, not as much as the stereo, but as time has gone along and I've been an advocate for this is mixing in stereo and Atmos simultaneously, Having one Pro Tools session that allows you to make the Atmos mix and make the stereo mix, and at the end of the mix you've got these two mixes.
Marc Matthews:So, in essence, you're starting with all the multi-track files, so you're mixing in one session. So you've got this. As you mentioned there. You've got one Pro Tools session where you're both doing the stereo and the Atmos mix. I'm fairly certain in most DAWs now there is an element there where you can do this spatial audio mixing. Fairly certain. There's one in logic. How is what is the link? Is or is there a link between sort of atmos and 5.1 and 7.1, or is there some sort of crossover there?
Matt Boudreau:sure, I mean, you know, we've been through a lot of different surround formats over the years and I think the problem has always been where are people going to hear this? And we're at a point now technologically where we can stream these files. On the pro side of it, on the creative side of it, the tools have really matured quite a bit. So the connection is in the past 5.1,1, 7.1 those were channel-based formats. Atmos is an object-based format, meaning it's an adaptable format. So maybe I make a mix in a 714 system like I've got, but then you play it on a 5.1 system on your home theater streaming through Apple Music. It will look at what the hardware is and it will approximate what is to happen for the listener there. It will say, okay, you've got this system. Therefore, this is how this is going to work on your system.
Marc Matthews:So it's kind of like intelligently working out or not transponding that'd be the wrong word but it's kind of work translating what the mix is to the system that you have, like you mentioned now, which is, which is quite impressive, because I guess, yeah, with atmos, there are many, many different format ways you can consume it now yeah, for just as a small example, like if you took, like if I take my iphone and I put it in landscape mode like this and I play back an Atmos mix, it's going to look at this and go okay, it's an Apple piece of hardware, it's got Dolby decoding in there and it's playing back on speakers.
Matt Boudreau:So if you're listening to Strawberry Fields Forever, there's a little kind of effect that happens in the intro that typically pans, I think, right to left or left to right. If you're holding it in front of your face, it sounds like it's like over here it's it's the most bizarre thing I've ever heard. So it can adapt to even the smallest of systems like an iphone. Or I have a mac MacBook Pro over here that's got a multitude of speakers in it. It'll play back Atmos files.
Marc Matthews:Wow, I didn't know that it was that intelligent that it would automatically work out the playback medium that you're using and then translate it to that medium. I'm going to look at that Strawberry Fields element, though, where you mentioned there about it being behind your head. That sounds really interesting. Is that a bit in strawberry fields, where it sort of detunes and it goes?
Matt Boudreau:that might be a really bad description of it yeah, there's, there's something that happens that if you hear it in stereo you're like okay, there it is. But if you hear it in atmos, you're like what just happened? What, what? Why did I just hear that zip past me?
Marc Matthews:Wow, I'm going to have to look that up. That's really interesting. This is inspiring me to go back to my binaural and immersive audio days and spatial audio Really interesting stuff. So you mentioned there about equipment, so we've been talking about the playback medium. So moving on then, really, for someone looking to get started, can you talk about sort of essential equipment or setup they might need? Are there any particular daws that you might recommend over another?
Matt Boudreau:you mentioned pro tools already or any particular keys, key pieces of hardware or software to get to get started yeah, I think, in order not to put too many people off, I think, pick the daw that you're most comfortable with. There's. There's certain ones that have it built in pro tools, reaper logic, uh, I Cubase, or new window I can't remember which if it's one of the other or both, but it's quite widespread in all in a lot of the DAWs. I don't know about Ableton and, uh, I don't know about the others, but those, those are the ones that I know that it's, it's involved in or embedded in For me, I think. You know I like Pro Tools, but that's me.
Matt Boudreau:You might you might have a different experience, but essentially you need to do it. You need a 714 system at minimum. So you need to find a speaker manufacturer that you can pick, essentially 12 speakers, 11 primary speakers to wrap around you and then a sub, and then you need something to control those. Some people use the Avid Matrix. I use a Grace M908. There's all kinds of solutions out there and in fact I believe there is I can't remember the name of the company, but there is a software controller out there that one can use if you're you know, if you're trying to economize my friend Travis Ferentz, who runs the podcast Progressions, the the progressions podcast. He uses the software controller and essentially, routes you know routes all your audio and spits it out to the right speakers, as long as you have a certain number of outputs on your interface interesting.
Marc Matthews:I'm going to reach out to travis. Uh, he was on the podcast, I want to say 10 episodes ago, I think it's something along those lines. So I'll reach out to Travis and ask. I was emailing him last week, so that would be interesting to see. If there's, as you mentioned, the software version, so with regards to sort of the setup in terms of speakers, is there, because I've not done this myself, is there a way of I suppose it'd be quite difficult do it using headphones? Is that, is it possible to do?
Matt Boudreau:you could certainly. That's one way to start experimenting with it. Um, my honest opinion is, like I do, I start in speakers and get the mix sounding great there, and then I I flip a switch on my grace and I listen to the binaural mix and adjust the distance of all of the elements in the mix they call it the metadata through the Dolby renderer that's built into Pro Tools and there's also an external renderer and you can essentially set it so that it's like either off near mid far, it adjusts distances of all the elements in the mix. Specifically for headphones, specifically for binaural. That binaural information is what you're hearing on Amazon and Tidal, Different for Apple. Apple looks at that information and uses their own kind of proprietary thing to approximate what you chose for your metadata. So you you could listen to a mix on Apple and listen to a mix on title and Amazon and there would be minor differences between them in headphones.
Marc Matthews:Yeah, interesting, without getting too in the weeds with regards to the. The technicalities of it is that where sort of head related transfer functions come in and, if I remember rightly, when you're using headphones to mimic the essentially the size of your head and how we hear sound yeah, and that's that's actually taken a very interesting turn, because, you know, on iphones you Because on iPhones you can take images of your ears and create your own personal HRTF.
Matt Boudreau:I tend not to use that. I tend to just use a generic HRTF built into the device because I don't want to make decisions based on something that's too personal. But then again I don't actually use the phone to fully check.
Matt Boudreau:And that's kind of confounding to a lot of people. They'll say well, you listen on speakers, you listen to the binaural? Don't you check the mix as it will appear on Apple? And the answer is no, because that is a moving target. That's an algorithm that changes over time as they improve it, and therefore I don't feel like I can count on it to make a decision. So, in other words, if I make a mix decision based on what's going on today, november 5th 2024, they may change that algorithm and then in six months, my mix will sound completely different on apple and headphones interesting.
Marc Matthews:Well, you mentioned that about the phone's really cool that you can use that to take a snapshot of your head. It kind of reminds me of waves have the abbey road and it's a nashville studio I can't remember which studio it is now anyway but it will position you in that studio and then you can use your webcam and then they will use the webcam to take measurements crude measurements, I guess of your head, to then come up with those head related transfer functions so it can mimic, put you in that room. Essentially, it sounds like it's quite similar with what Apple are doing with the iPhone, but I didn't even know that existed. This is all a learning curve for me. I didn't realize that you could do all this additional stuff for one of a better way of putting it with regards to your sort of Atmos prep, as it were.
Matt Boudreau:Yeah, and on the phones. Just you know not to leave the Android folks out, because I used to be a diehard Android person Samsung and Google. I believe the Google, pixels, andels and all the typical Samsung phones, I think, contain the decoding to also do this.
Marc Matthews:Ah, that's good news. I'm a Samsung user myself, so I can look at that, which is weird because everything else I have is Apple. So I'm still not entirely sure why I've still got a Samsung phone. Everything else here is Apple. I've got my Mac Studio, I've got my MacBook, I've got an iPad with my notes on, and then I've got this Samsung phone sat in the corner but if you want to hear it on Apple, I do believe you have to be subscribed to Apple music.
Matt Boudreau:Otherwise I don't think the Dolby features are available on your device.
Marc Matthews:Yeah, as a um, a slight tangent here. Um, with my line of questioning cause I as a slight tangent here with my line of questioning because I was going to move on to the room and considerations for that are you finding you're having more inquiries for Atmos mixing compared to, let's say, a year to 18 months ago? Is it something that you're noticing growth in?
Matt Boudreau:Boy, yes, and nobody comes to me and says, can you mix stereo or Atmos, they just say, can you mix, and then I'm usually the one that says yeah, and I'm and presenting and discussing Atmos. So I might not be the best test case for that.
Marc Matthews:Yeah, I get you. Did you do a talk recently with Atmos?
Matt Boudreau:I did I was at AES in New York and I did a presentation on mixing stereo and Atmos to a very enthusiastic crowd with a ton of questions.
Marc Matthews:Wow, amazing. Did you provide case studies as well? Did you provide and play back and showcase mixes, or was it just sort of like a talk?
Matt Boudreau:Yeah, I completely opened up a mix, walked everybody through it, talked them through the routing, explained how I arrived at this decision and and and you know basically not just the technical but the business related decisions behind a lot of it too yeah, I would have loved to have seen that.
Matt Boudreau:I need to get out to more of those well, I, actually I, I offer a free course on it, um, at working class audio, where basically you just go, you put, type in your email and, boom, you're in and you can watch. It's like three chapters and I walked through the whole thing. Oh wow, and it's free, so you can just check it out and see how I'm doing things. I probably should do a follow-up, because I'm having people follow up with like okay, now what I really need you to do is send me the template and show me your IO page in great detail, amazing.
Marc Matthews:I'm going to check that out. And audience listing. I will check it out and then I'll put a link to it in the show notes as well. So if you're as intrigued as I am, do go check that out. But no, thanks, matt. But circling back to my original sort of line of questioning. So we mentioned there about equipment, hardware, software. What about sort of?
Matt Boudreau:room considerations. Well, and and when I started and made the, the decision, it was kind of a snap decision. It was because I, you know, I'm friends with andrew schatz, I'm friends with brad wood, fellow engineers, and and steve genowick, who was working at capital, and I noticed, you know, steve had been talking about atmos for a little bit, so it was on my radar, but my question had always been well, where is where are people going to hear this? So I ignored it. And then I saw Andrew get set up. Excuse me, andrew got set up and then I noticed Brad getting set up with it and I was like something's going on. What is going on? Why? Why are these friends of mine doing this? And then Apple made the announcement that they were going to support it and I was like I'm in, count me in.
Matt Boudreau:So I immediately reached out to Maurice over at PMC, because I knew him through going to NAMM, and I sent him video and drawings and measurements of my room because I said look, maurice, I got a small room here and I got a room that is strangely shaped. The walls aren't parallel, the ceiling slopes, because it's a mid-century modern house. Can I even get away with this? And he was like, absolutely, here's the speaker setup we should use. And I just I jumped in with that my, you know, I know that, uh, you're, we'll do the conversion.
Matt Boudreau:I'm like, well, I can't do the conversion off the top of my head, I'll let your audience do the conversion. But physically this room is like less than 200 square feet, so it's, you know, at the at its highest it's probably 11 or 12 feet tall and at its lowest it's probably 11 or 12 feet tall and at its lowest it's probably seven and a half or eight feet tall. So I made it work and made some speaker choices to accommodate to the space. But I'm happy that I have the space this small, because I've been to larger rooms and it's a different experience. This is a more intimate thing and every time I take the mixes out of here to bigger rooms or to different systems, it surprisingly translates really well.
Marc Matthews:Would you say there is like a? I suppose you might not be able to answer the question, but is there sort of like a minimum size room in terms of, like, square footage? Did you was it Maurice? I think you said Maurice? Did he sort of provide information on what would be a minimum you?
Matt Boudreau:know there's a lot of resources over at the, the, the Dolby website, for to answer a lot of these questions and what they recommend. But practically speaking, you know, I think if you have the smaller your room, the smaller speakers you should choose. You don't want speakers with giant, you know giant woofers. Ik Multimedia makes these I don't know what they're called, mtms or something. They sell like 11 of them and then you'll need a sub for like I don't know four grand and they're small. They can be mounted on mic stands. They can easily be mounted on on ceilings. So if you're looking to put together a system that will fit in a extra small room, that might be a way to go.
Marc Matthews:It's good advice. I think they're like cater your monitors, your monitoring setup, to the size of your room because, as you say, it doesn't make sense to have large speakers in a small room because, yeah, it's just not going to work. Is it which which makes perfect sense?
Matt Boudreau:there is another element to this, though. I probably should mention to those that are thinking about it, and what I got all the speakers in place and then dolby came to my house and they tuned the room. They they shot the room. It was like an array of microphones and you know getting into my system and playing back, you know pink noise and taking measurements, and when they were gone and I and I hit play, I was stunned because it sounded good before. But when, when Jonathan Lesner from Dolby left, I was just in shock. I was like, oh my gosh, this sounds amazing.
Matt Boudreau:And what they do in that process is time align the speakers, because you want all the speakers hitting the listening position at the same time. You don't want disparity in that. And then they tune the whole system and this is a little confounding to some people. The whole system, instead of being tuned flat, is tuned to what they call the Dolby curve, and it's a curve that was adopted and fought over and people wringing their hands like why are we doing it this way? But everybody kind of came to a consensus that this was the way to go, that this was the way to go, and some people reject it.
Matt Boudreau:Some people are like I don't use the curve, I tune my room flat. I just I got on board with it. I was like, okay, it is what it is, I'm going to, I'm going to run with this. And it turned out to be a a great thing for me, a smart thing for me, because on a flat system, I know myself and I tend to mix a little on the darker side. But this, this curve, has a little bit of a dip in the top end, and so I hear that and respond accordingly by making my mix a little brighter than I normally would. I mean, it sounds right in the room and therefore, when I hear it out in the world, I'm like, wow, this sounds exactly like it should sound like, from top to bottom.
Marc Matthews:Interesting. The Dolby Curve, that's really interesting. I'm going to look that one up.
Matt Boudreau:Yeah, and, as a matter of fact, my Grace controller. Since I got it three years ago, its capabilities have been expanded. So one thing that we were running into when we were tuning the room initially is by the time we got to the ceiling speakers we were out of bands of eq to tune each speaker, so we had to kind of economize on the number of bands we used on the ceiling. So since then, dolby reached out to me and said hey, we know that your grace controller can do way more than it used to, so how about we come back? So they're going to come back and they're going to make some tweaks and we're going to really just get micro in in the tuning and uh and the time alignment even further yeah, I really like what you mentioned there about the um, the dolby curve, and how you say that your mixes previously would have been airing on the darker side.
Marc Matthews:But now you've got this. You're almost working with this dolby curve and then it's creating these slightly, I guess, brighter mixes and then when they're put out in the wild they're sounding as they should, which is which is really cool. It's quite a nice sort of adaption to the workflow. Can you remember like the single biggest, let's say, change that dolby made to your room that had the biggest impact? Was it just as a whole?
Matt Boudreau:I think the time alignment is probably the biggest thing when you're dealing with this many speakers. Like I said, I got everything hooked up on my own. Everything was fully running and I thought, wow, wow, this is cool. But then, when they tuned everything and the time alignment happened, it was just. It just sounded that one one step higher in in its quality.
Marc Matthews:Man I'd love that that was so good. I like you think you've got it tuned and then like you have someone uh, those sort of specialist set of ears come in and then really get their teeth into your setup and then just open it up like that. That must be so and I can imagine just walking in and you kind of get that halo effect when you like listen to listen to this, this new setup that you have yeah, and.
Matt Boudreau:And when I discovered that I had the ability to stream apple music through the system and hear other people's mixes, that I was never gonna. I'm never going to leave this room.
Marc Matthews:I can imagine that would be so good. That would be amazing, Fantastic, Matt. But I think, moving on with regards to the actual mixing process itself, maybe if you could sort of tell us a bit about your approach to balancing because you mentioned this earlier about balancing projects that need both stereo and Atmos mixing Can you tell our audience about specific techniques that you use to ensure that both versions translate well?
Matt Boudreau:Yeah, it's actually not that complicated, and let's just start with on the back end of it, on the workflow end of it. So, very much like we all mix in stereo and we check mono compatibility or at least we used to quite a bit, maybe not as much. Um, I have two switches here on the grace controller that I can just, you know, listen to the full Atmos on the speakers and then I can, you know, hit the 2.0 down mix and listen to that same mix as it is being re-rendered in, uh, in real time as a stereo mix. Um, also running in the same pro tool session. Now, this is not, this is not, you know, a completely different set of tracks. It's the same set of tracks. You're just you're either listening to Atmos or you're listening to the stereo, and then on the heels of that I'm also listening to on headphones I can listen to the binaural mix, so I can hear what the spaciousness is like and if I want to make any adjustments there. So that's that part of it what I'll tend to do. Let's say, you send me tracks, mark, I'll put them into a Pro Tools session, I'll bring in my Atmos template, which includes my stereo stuff as well, and I'll just push everything to the front left and right speakers and just start getting a rough mix together. And then, once I'm happy with that rough mix, then I start thinking, okay, these guitars could go off to the side, this effect can go back here in the rear. Maybe something should go in the ceiling. What's the front wall going to sound like? Okay, great, that sounds pretty good. Now let's listen to the stereo version of that, let's see what's changed.
Matt Boudreau:And up to this point, the number one thing I always find myself adjusting is the lead vocal level. It's every time I go to the stereo I'm like, oh, okay, it's a little hot, a little too much lead vocal, let's back it off. So it sounds great in stereo. And then I come back to the atmos mix and I think, oh, okay, that's actually quite good, that's. That's a a good move to make to satisfy both realms. And I want to point out that while I do listen on the PMCs for the stereo, that's got the Dolby Curve on it. So I have a set of IK Multimedia iLouds the tiniest, cheapest speakers they make in stereo no curve, just kind of, with the switches on the back adjusted to sound good to my ear and to me. That's my gut check, that's my okay. Well, how's it going to sound on a small system? And what's the top end sound like? What's the top end sound like? What's the vocal level like, okay, that and the kick drum, great, let's move back.
Marc Matthews:I like what you said there about how you start with the left and right mix, so that's getting your sort of your rough balance, as it were, and then you start moving around from there. Do you find, because you mentioned that, okay, for example, you hear guitars and you think, well, I'll move those guitars slightly further out to the out, to the sides is there a sort of like a general pattern, you find, with an atmos mix, in terms of where certain instruments are positioned, for example guitars, or maybe synthesizers or pianos, and then we've got drums like a snare and a kick drum down the center, like a conventional mix? Do you find there's a? Yeah, is there. Is there a pattern to how how they are positioned, or is it creative choice?
Matt Boudreau:It's creative choice. It's ultimately up to the individual. I find that my goal is to make it sound so that if somebody hears it at most mix and speakers they're going to be like, oh my gosh, this sounds amazing. But if they hear it in stereo it's also going to sound amazing. And I spend a fair amount of time making sure that the stereo mix and the binaural mix and headphones are fairly equal. Because what happens inevitably? You know you can feed information into the LFE, so that gives you an opportunity in the binaural and in this and in the Atmos mix to have this like kind of weighty foundation, like low end. When you down mix it to stereo, that LFE goes away. It's not there.
Matt Boudreau:So what I do is I have a you know like for lack of a better term, it's like a secondary stereo bus where I'll just add, like a pull tech, eqp, eq1p or uh, eqp1a I'm spacing on the number but where I just add a little boost of 100 and uh to beef up the stereo mix so that it's bottom end is is got a lot of parity compared to the binaural mix. Because I don't want the listener who's on their phone who decides oh okay, I'm listening to the binaural mix, that sounds good, oh, I'm switching phones or I'm turning the Dolby Atmos thing off. I've stopped subscribing to this. When I hear the stereo mix, I still want the same impact for that.
Marc Matthews:Yeah, yeah, that rings true actually, because I remember when I was working with binaural and I remember having conversations about the the low end frequency response in binaural compared to a stereo mix. It's sort of there's something in the back of my head is now triggering and I remember having these conversations. Are you still checking in mono as well, then, because you mentioned mono way back at the beginning? Are you still doing those mono checks?
Matt Boudreau:Kind of. I mean, I hit the mono button and listen to it on the stereo speakers and make sure nothing's going astray or disappearing, make sure that there's nothing wrong there. So, yeah, yeah, the answer is yes.
Marc Matthews:Nice, nice, excellent stuff. So I think, for someone considering making the jump to Atmos, or at least experimenting, what advice would you give about the learning curve you mentioned there about Dolby, so we can go on the Dolby website and we can find advice, or yeah, let's say advice on how we can set up our rooms, et cetera and various other bits and pieces. But are there any resources or training tools? Obviously, we've got the one you mentioned earlier from yourself, sure.
Matt Boudreau:To get up to speed with this format Boy. There could be more. I'll just tell you anything from my friends Justin Gray or Andrew Sheps watch that or Steve Genowick. Anything any of those guys says I will get behind, Because Steve is actually the one that really allowed me to connect with him. I flew down to Los Angeles we're friends so I stayed at his house for a weekend. I just spent a weekend in an Atmos boot camp with him.
Matt Boudreau:My own personal mix with the Masters. He walked me through the whole thing. This is like three going well over three years ago. And when I, you know, walked away from that experience I was like, okay, I know what's going on now, I understand it. Not everybody has that luxury, so that's why I say anything from Steve Andrew Sheps or Justin Gray up in Toronto, check out what they have to say and then, of course, check out my, my free course.
Matt Boudreau:But as far as I think my, my advice goes, my best advice would be take it in chunks. It's a lot to digest, it's there's so much information and it's such a radically different way of working that I had to just isolate it into bits to go okay, pick the speakers, figure out the monitor controller. Okay, great, that shows up, let's connect it all. How does that work? And then it took me six months of continual mixing and sending mixes out to fellow Atmos mixers to say what am I doing wrong? How does this sound? What's going on here?
Matt Boudreau:And I would get feedback like don't be afraid of the sub, don't be afraid to spread things out a little more. And it was great advice. And finally I hit a point where I was like OK, I feel comfortable doing what I'm doing. Let's start doing it for real and right. Shortly after that, um, my friend, chris Dugan, who works for Green Day, hit me up and he brought me uh tracks to do for Alanis Morissette and for Green Day. For um, green Day does the theme song to a show, um, on HBO called Real Time with Bill Maher, and they were starting to broadcast HBO was starting to broadcast live in Atmos, so that was the inaugural show to do it on. So they wanted the Green Day theme song mixed in Atmos so that if you have an Atmos system, you'll hear my mix.
Marc Matthews:I think what you said there about the it's kind of like for want of a better word putting it that echo chamber, whereby what you mentioned there about the it's kind of like for want of a better word putting it that echo chamber, whereby what you mentioned there about when you're first getting started, don't be afraid to obviously use and be experiment and be creative with Atmos, but then send it out to others for feedback. I think that's really, really important. I think it's something I preach a lot on the podcast, to be fair is, use your peers and your network for feedback, which I think will hold you in very good stead in terms of of your progression in whatever it is that you are doing. So I think that's really really good advice, really valuable stuff, and the andrew sheps one as well. I'm fairly confident.
Marc Matthews:I was listening to the progressions podcast with travis ference and he had andrew sheps on there and he was talking. I'm sure there was a conversation about Atmos on there. It's all coming back to me now in this, this really foggy, cold head that I've got on the moment. So really, really great stuff. But it's been a pleasure having you on this episode talking about Atmos. I think it's it. This would be a good opportunity maybe, um, to just tell the audience listening if they're not familiar with you, maybe a bit about, um, working class audio, what you're up to, and, uh, we've already mentioned the, the um, the freebie, uh, which I'm going to put in the episode description, but maybe, if you've got anything else as well, um, I'll just give you the bullet point history.
Matt Boudreau:I've been in the world of audio now for about 30 years. Prior to that I was, you know, a drummer playing in bands, had some record deals, toured, recorded in the days of analog, uh, in the days prior to cell phones and the internet, and came upon this thing pro tools and around 1997 or 98 thought I think I'm going to get into pro tools, I think this could go somewhere, and we see how that worked out. And a little over 10 years ago I had a studio in San Francisco with my friend, michael Romanowski, and that ended up being quite a disaster financially for me and it was probably one of the biggest learning points in my life and it kicked my ass. And so the results of that experience caused me to start to say what's everybody doing? How does this even work anymore? I'm just totally frustrated.
Matt Boudreau:So I created the Working Class Audio podcast to be the vehicle to ask all my friends and peers and colleagues how they deal with survival, business mistakes, mentors, all that stuff. And so for the last 10 years I've got well over 500 episodes under my belt. Talked to a metric, what would they say? A crap ton, a metric, crap. Ton of people or metric shit.
Matt Boudreau:Ton of people excuse me um, yeah, I've talked to a lot of people at great length about how to do this and I've learned quite a bit, but I I'm still. You know it's still a work in progress. I'm no expert, but you know, the trick is to get out there, try, ask questions and make and make mistakes and course correct as you go.
Marc Matthews:I love that. I think that's great advice. I think 10 years is amazing for a podcast. Obviously podcasts, the whole podcast business now is relatively big. But you've been in the podcast game for a long time. You're kind of like a podcast OG, really been 10 years, the podcast game for a long time. You're kind of like a podcast og, really been 10 years. So, um, but what you said there about sort of continue continuously growing and learning and progressing throughout because we don't, we never master it, I don't. I think if anyone was to turn around and say they've mastered it, I'd be amazed. You're always learning and there's always something, something new around the corner to learn. And only through these discussions like how hold my hands in the air at Moss is a new wheelhouse for me. So just discussions like today for a podcast like this, I learn loads. And kind of the same reason. I started the podcast 170 episodes ago, much like yourself, just to talk to others and see what they're up to and how I can take that information.
Matt Boudreau:Yeah, I think the key is don is don't get. Don't get the smartest guy in the room syndrome. Don't, don't, don't, ever think that. Always. Just assume that you can learn something from the people that you're around and surround yourself with smart people.
Marc Matthews:Most definitely, most definitely. I was going to put you on the spot a bit there, cause you've got 500 episodes and I was going to say which episode would you recommend the audience start with. But yeah, I'll throw it out there. Have you got one that you'd recommend and start with?
Matt Boudreau:There's two Episode 200 with Chad Blake. You know Chad is not one to do a lot of interviews, but he was gracious enough to give me an interview and, um, I'm grateful to him for that. Uh, episode 300, which I actually just um, I'm starting to pay attention to YouTube after 10 years and I actually posted, uh, the 300th episode kind of a lot you know from the archives kind of approach with Andrew Sheps. He did my 300th episode. He was on my ninth episode and my 300th episode. So I would say, check either one of those out episode nine or episode 300, or episode 200.
Marc Matthews:Yeah, fantastic. I'm sure I listened to that episode 300 recently. I'm sure I did so. I remember I remember something, hearing something similar. But no audience do please go and check out the working class audio podcast. I know a lot of them already listened because I've had conversations with the audience, um, about the podcast itself. So fantastic stuff. Matt, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast and it's a groundbreaking today for the podcast as well with the talk of Atmos. So I know the audience get a lot out of it because it is a topical conversation I routinely have with them. So a huge thank you. Thanks for joining me today.
Matt Boudreau:Absolutely, Mark. Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity to come on your show.
Marc Matthews:No, it's been an absolute pleasure. I will talk to you soon. Folks, before you go, I want to hear from you. I want to know your favorite episode of the Inside the Mix podcast. Alternatively, you could just review this episode, click the SpeakPipe link in the episode description and you can record an audio message detailing your favorite episode and why, and also give yourself a shout out. All you need is your mobile phone. You don't need a SpeakPipe account. You don't need to download an app. It's just like sending me an audio message via WhatsApp or whatever messaging platform you use. As soon as I get your audio, you will be entered in that month's draw to win a Starbucks coffee voucher, and if you don't like coffee, just give it to someone else and pretend that you bought it for them. All you need to do is click that speak pipe link and send me an audio message reviewing this episode or a previous episode and give yourself a shout out.
